


Snowman

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:57:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5530169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s when the thing wearing his brother strikes Sam that Sam finally knows for sure that his brother is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowman

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks and much love to my betas Marcia and Simone. <3

Dean hits him across the face. It’s just a mild blow that glances off the side of Sam’s jaw, and it’s more the shock that knocks him off his feet and onto his back, more vulnerable in front of his brother than he’s ever been.

“You listen to me when I ask you to do something, you little asshole,” Dean says, a positively un-Dean-like sneer twisting his handsome features into something alien, something that has never had a place in Sam’s universe: the universe in which his big brother has always been the center, unquestioning devotion to each other the only rule by which they define the madness that is otherwise their lives.

Dean’s gone before Sam can pick himself up off the floor, the smell of gun oil and whiskey left hanging in the air, and it’s never felt less like home. Outside, the snow is falling thick and fast.

 

\--

 

“Dad, I… I don’t know if you’ll get this message, but if you do, please… Please come back. Please come back soon. It’s… Something’s wrong with Dean. I’m scared, Dad. He isn’t himself and I… Please.”

 

\--

 

Dad doesn’t come, and he doesn’t call back.

It occurs to Sam a few times to simply run away, bide his time until Dad or someone else (someone, anyone) brings the real Dean back, because Sam knows that this almost-man, this nineteen-year-old who’s more than a foot taller than Sam and a million times meaner than the real Dean, isn’t his brother. Not really.

Sam knows because Dean would never hit him. Dean would never even think about hitting him. Dean, who insists more often than not that Sam stay behind when Dean goes on a hunt with Dad, because just the thought of Sam getting hurt is something that Dean doesn’t want to have to think about.

Dean’s protectiveness is often annoying to Sam, but right now he’d do anything to have Dean ruffle his hair and say _You’re staying home, little brother. I won’t be long, I promise._

 

\--

 

The morning after Dean hits him, Sam wakes up with a swollen jaw.

“You can’t go to school looking like that,” Dean says after one look at him. He pushes Sam easily back into the bedroom, his hand huge on Sam’s thin chest, and Sam’s fear of this not-Dean, this stranger, bursts open inside him like rotten fruit.

Dean doesn’t hit him again. The door locks shut with a click.

The rental house is mostly quiet for a while, and then the rumble of the Impala’s engine breaks the silence. Five minutes later, Sam tries climbing out the window, but even he isn’t skinny enough to get through the bars.

When darkness begins to fall, Dean still hasn’t returned. The house is stone cold; there’s no heating, and the fireplace is in the small living room. 

(Two weeks earlier it had been Dean’s nineteenth birthday and they’d sat on the floor in front of the crackling fire, Dean’s face alight with the joy he hadn’t been able to conceal when he’d torn the wrapping off the gifts Sam had given him. The memory of Dean’s hair shining gold in the firelight is frozen in Sam’s mind now, still like a photograph; Sam realizes he hasn't heard Dean's full-throated laugh in days, may never hear it again.)

Curled up on the bed with every blanket in the room wrapped tightly around him, Sam still can’t stop his teeth from chattering. Hours later he wakes with a start, his head pounding, unable to shake off an image from his dreams: Dean with black eyes, swinging a hammer at him, a long narrow corridor stretching away from them on both sides, bright lights turning everything to ice.

 

\--

 

When he finally hears the sound of a car’s motor again, it’s not the Impala, but Dad’s truck.

“Sammy!”

“Dad!” Sam pounds on the door from the inside.

“Stand back, Sammy,” Dad says from the other side of the door, his voice muffled by the wood. Sam scrambles back just before the door is kicked open, and then Dad is there, his big warm hands cupping Sam’s face, pushing back his hair, checking for injuries.

“I’m sorry,” Dad says, his eyes on Sam’s bruised face. “Sammy, I’m so sorry.”

“Dean,” Sam says, trying to pull away from Dad’s hands, trying to look over his shoulder. “Dad, where’s Dean?”

“I got him,” Dad says simply, jerking his head toward the living room.

 

\--

 

They recuperate at Bobby’s, but only after Dean has been put through all the tests that Bobby can think of, neither Dad nor Bobby willing to take Dean’s word for the fact that he’s no longer possessed.

It’s still winter, and Sam can’t run out of the house and curl up in the back of his favorite junker in Bobby’s yard the way he might have done if it had been warmer outside. Sensing his unease, Dean leaves him alone, doesn’t muss his hair or pull pranks the way he might have done if he didn’t remember what he’d done to Sam when he’d been possessed. 

 

\--

 

It’s two weeks before Dad and Bobby leave Sam alone with Dean.

Bobby’s house isn’t cold like the rental but the fear returns, and Sam doesn’t step out of the room that he and Dean usually share when they’re at Bobby’s. He throws salt all along the threshold of the door with shaking hands, determined to stay in the room until Dad and Bobby get back.

There’s a knock on the door. Dean never knocks. The door doesn’t have a lock.

“I made sandwiches. If you’re hungry,” Dean says, pushing open the door and stepping into the room. He’s looking at Sam for the first time in days, but then his gaze falls on the thick line of salt that he’s already stepped over.

Sam stares at him, keeping his bed between himself and Dean.

“It’s me,” Dean says, holding up his hands, defenseless palms toward Sam. “Sammy, I swear it’s me.”

Sam nods, feeling his fists unclench. The memory of Dean with dark eyes—no more than a dream, but real nonetheless—refuses to leave, frozen behind Sam’s eyelids like an old brand. 

Pushing past Dean as quickly as possible, Sam heads out into the yard. (Maybe tomorrow, they'll be brothers again. Tomorrow, when Dean will be okay, when he'll be there as usual, larger than life and getting in Sam's way.)

 

\--

 

They’re back on the road again in less than a week, Sam sandwiched in the front seat of Dad’s truck between his father and brother. It takes three hours to drive to where the Impala is—Dad had had to leave the car behind when he’d caught up with Dean and knocked him out.

Dean gets out of the truck when they reach the car, his hollow gaze not even attempting to look in Sam’s direction, as though he already knows that Sam won’t be riding in the car with him. Sam shifts in his seat until he’s occupying the space that Dean has just vacated, the seat still warm, the window frame cold where it brushes against Sam’s skin.

 

\--

 

Dad’s in a good mood that evening. They’re back at the rental house and the fire is crackling as though it had never stopped, and Dad even offers Dean a drink. Sam, sitting at the dining table and trying to catch up with his schoolwork, glances at his brother, watches him mumble a refusal, his eyes not leaving the gun that he’s cleaning. Dean never mumbles; Dean almost never turns down Dad’s offer to drink with him. Dean looks up at Sam then, a quick half-glance through the thick layer of guilt he’s been wearing ever since he woke up in Bobby’s house after the exorcism.

When Dad retreats into his bedroom, tired out from driving and from attempting to ignore the silence between his sons, Dean leaves the room too.

Sam follows him out into the cold night air and finds him at the car, his palms flat against the top of the trunk, his head bowed between his shoulders. (One of those hands had hit Sam less than ten days ago. Both of those hands have been gentle with Sam ever since he can remember, except for that one time when Dean wasn’t really Dean.)

“Dean,” Sam says. It’s the first time he’s said Dean’s name since they got Dean back.

Dean doesn’t turn around. “Go back inside, Sam. It’s cold.”

“Dean, I’m sorry.”

Dean looks up then, his eyes familiar even in the half-light from the porch. “Sammy, I… You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Sam steps closer to him and puts his hand on the sleeve of Dean’s jacket, the warmth of Dean’s skin bleeding through the layers he’s wearing. Dean turns around and gathers Sam into his arms and Sam’s world spins back into place so suddenly that for a second he’s almost dizzy with the fierce, unexpected joy of it, fears and nightmares melting back into the shadows under the crushing force of his immense relief, and Sam knows then that this is his brother, that _this_ Dean, warm and shaking against him, is real, and the thing from his nightmares, the one with black eyes, was never really his brother at all.


End file.
